


the mystery of magic

by perfectlyrose



Series: Everyday Magic [6]
Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Magic, F/M, Magic-Users, Universe Alteration, magic!rose
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-29
Updated: 2017-10-29
Packaged: 2019-01-26 07:25:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,265
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12552240
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/perfectlyrose/pseuds/perfectlyrose
Summary: While Rose is recovering from casting her counterspell, the Doctor decides to try and learn a bit about magic.A direct follow-up to Counterspell





	the mystery of magic

**Author's Note:**

> This one is Doctor POV instead of Rose POV like the rest of the series has been thus far, just fyi
> 
> also shoutout to sequencefairy for being super encouraging as I worked on this and listening to me talk about it ad nauseam

“So, you said Rose ate something that disagreed with her?” Jack asked, leaning on the doorway leading from the console room back into the rest of the TARDIS. 

“Yup,” the Doctor said, not looking up from where he was fiddling with something on the console. He’d already sent them into the Vortex. “Took care of it in the medbay but she’s sleeping it off.”

“Surprised you’re not hovering by her bedside,” Jack said.

“She’s fine. Sent me to find you before you ate the same thing or blundered into worse trouble.” 

“And you actually listened? Aw, you do care, Doc!”

The Doctor glared at him but it did nothing to dampen the grin on Jack’s face.

“Well, if we’re Vortex-bound for a while, I think I’ll check out that spa room I spotted a while back. If your lovely ship will let me find it again.” He patted the wall affectionately.

The TARDIS  hummed an affirmative and Jack laughed. “I’m going to marry your ship, Doctor.”

“Watch it, Harkness,” the Doctor growled. There was no heat behind his words though so Jack kept smiling.

“Alright, I’m off for some pampering. Don’t wait up.” The captain turned and set off down the corridor with a lazy wave towards the Time Lord.

As soon as he was out of sight, the Doctor let out a sigh. He didn’t particularly like lying to people he considered friends, especially when the lie concealed the amazing things Rose had done. It was Rose’s decision though and he would keep her secret as long as she asked him to.

The TARDIS would keep Jack entertained with interesting rooms until Rose was recovered and ready to face their friend again, he was sure. His ship was inordinately fond of his companion and had been since the moment she had stepped aboard.

It was unusual. Usually the TARDIS was ambivalent about the people he brought along. Sometimes she would take a shine to one or have a tendency to switch the corridors around on the ones she didn’t care for as much. 

Rose was a different story altogether. His ship downright pampered her and, on multiple occasions, he’d witnessed the TARDIS trying to talk to Rose in the same manner she talked to him. She wasn’t telepathic so it never worked but the two of them had figured out a way to communicate nonetheless.

It was an anomaly and something about their connection prickled at his time senses. It felt important but he wasn’t sure why. There were a few odd things around Rose and he was fairly sure it had almost nothing to do with her magic. The Doctor had even tried to peek at her timeline once, something he rarely did, to try and figure it out but found her timeline completely shrouded to him.

He hadn’t seen her glow golden with her magic very often, but each time that particular sight tickled the back of his mind like he was trying to recall a memory he didn’t have yet.

It was  _ possible _ that the TARDIS was fond of Rose simply because she was picking up on the Doctor’s feelings towards her, but he thought it improbable. The TARDIS had always excelled at forming her own opinions, completely distinct from his own.

He sensed that he wouldn’t figure out that particular Rose-related mystery out until the time was right but that didn’t mean he couldn’t work on understanding something else. Grumbling to himself, the Doctor left the console room and started off down the corridors with jerky movements. He swore he could still feel the burning energy of Rose’s counterspell sparking through him, leaving him full of restless energy.

(It also felt like a magnetic force, drawing him back to Rose but he fought against it. She needed her rest and he would see her soon enough.)

(His logic did nothing to quell the urge to run to her side.)

The Doctor stayed on track, heading straight for the library. He’d been meaning to do some research into the existence of magic and its different forms since Rose had entrusted him with her secret. He just hadn’t managed to carve out the time yet. Now seemed like as good of a time as any.

He accessed the library catalogue from a panel inset into the wall. He wanted to start with things in his own collection before moving on to various forms of online databases.

His search turned up a few handfuls of books and infocubes. The Doctor gathered everything and took them to his desk in a secluded corner of the library to start going over them.

He was halfway through book five when the TARDIS nudged him to let him know that Rose was beginning to wake. The Doctor marked his place in the book from sixty-second century Onlitix and straightened the stack of notes he’d taken. 

The Doctor rolled his shoulders and stretched, wincing when his spine let out a series of cracks after being hunched over the desk for a few hours. Asking the TARDIS to let him know when Rose was fully awake, he headed to the galley to start the fry-up he’d promised her.

He was just serving up a plate of food when Rose stumbled into the kitchen, all mussed hair and bleary eyes. 

She looked so beautiful that the Doctor couldn’t catch his breath for a moment.

Rose collapsed into one of the chairs after giving him a half smile.

“I’m guessing tea needs to come before food?” The Doctor asked, leaning back against the counter.

She nodded. “Definitely.”

He popped the kettle on and quickly got a cuppa ready the way Rose usually drank it in the mornings. He wasn’t often in the kitchen with her when she came in to rustle up caffeine and food, but it was enough that he knew how she took her tea.

He slid the mug onto the table in front of her before grabbing the plate of steaming hot food and bringing it to the table as well. He took the seat opposite her at the table.

Rose stomach growled audibly as the scent wafted over to her and the Doctor chuckled. 

“Weren’t understating things when you said you’d be hungry, then?”

She shook her head and took a long drink of tea, ignoring the fact that it was still scalding. When the mug was half empty before she looked properly awake.

“You’re feeling better?” She asked, flicking her eyes over him. He felt a bit exposed, having left his jacket in the library and pushed the sleeves of his jumper up past his elbows while cooking.

“Should be asking you that,” he said, with a wry smile. “Good as new, me.”

“Good,” Rose said. “I thought that it had worked but I started doubting myself when I woke up. Didn’t know if the spell would stick or if it was dodgy.”

“Rose Tyler, you used a possibly dodgy spell on me? I’m appalled.”

She snorted as she stabbed a sausage with her fork. “Would you have preferred waiting to see if that curse wore off on its own?”

“Not in the slightest. How are  _ you  _ feeling?” He asked.

“Better for the sleep. Will feel even better after this food.” She pointed her fork at him. “You’ve been holding out on me if you can cook like this and haven’t shared before now.”

“I’ve got to keep a few secrets to myself,” the Doctor insisted. “You’d get bored otherwise.”

Rose rolled her eyes and just kept eating.

The Doctor watched and waited, trying to figure out the best way to ask the questions that were buzzing inside of him. He almost jumped when she looked up to pin him with that sharp brown gaze of hers.

“You can say whatever it is that you’re tiptoeing around right now. I probably won’t get offended,” she said, raising an eyebrow at him.

The Doctor wondered when he’d become so transparent of it was just Rose who could see straight through him. “I’m still just trying to figure out the whole magic thing. Bit behind the curve on understanding it.”

“What do you want to know? I’m not exactly an expert but I at least know some theory and history since it runs in the family.”

“Does it always run in families? Like a genetic mutation or something that is passed down?” The Doctor asked.

“Don’t know about the mutation bit but at least on Earth, it does tend to run in families. Sometimes the magic in a family died out and sometimes it would pop up in someone who had no known family history of magic but, as far as I know, there’s usually a family line of magic users.”

That lined up with what his research was saying. It had to be genetic somehow. But something he hadn’t seen in his reading thus far…

“Do other magic users glow like you do when you’re doing advanced magic?”

Rose chewed her bite of food slowly. “Not that I know of. My mum doesn’t and she said she hadn’t heard of anyone else in the family doing so. We don’t really know where that bit came from or why I seem to be the only one who glows.” She shot the Doctor a smile. “It’s pretty but a bit inconvenient if I’m trying to not be noticed.”

“I imagine so.”

“Anything else?”

“You read the counterspell off a piece of paper and you had a specific spell for lighting the fire when we were stuck in that cave. Is all of your magic reliant on knowing a specific spell or just some of them?” 

Rose waved a hand towards the kettle and set it to boiling again before getting up to make a new cup of tea. “I think it depends on the person,” she said as she turned back towards the table to sit back down. “Different people have affinities for different types of magic. I think I told you before that my mum’s a dab hand with healing spells.”

The Doctor nodded.

“She still uses specific spells for most of her healing but that’s because it’s a bit more exacting than other things. When I do things like boil the water or make my bed or call something from across the room it’s more like… focusing on what I want and sending out a bit of energy?” She wrinkled her nose. “Not a good explanation but it’s hard to describe. I don’t have a specific spell for those things but I can do them magically anyways.

“Things like lockpicking and muffling spells and the like, I learned a couple of basic spells and have modified them as I got better at them and can almost cast them without any ceremony.”

“So the more complicated the magic, the more likely it is to have certain words and gestures associated with it?” The Doctor clarified.

“Yeah. Also the user’s familiarity with the type of magic. Some of the places we’ve visited have had very elaborate spells and a couple have had almost no spell form at all. So it seems a bit all over the place to me.”

“I started doing some research while you were sleeping so maybe I can find out some more,” he offered.

Rose lit up. “Oh! I never even thought to check your library!” She leaned over the table, “Do you think there are books I could learn new magic from? It’s always so hard to find things outside of your own family’s lore and whatever others are willing to share when you find someone else who’s magical.”

“Thought you said you’d been swapping spells during our travels?”

“Sometimes, but some people don’t like to share, especially with a stranger.”

“I haven’t run across anything in what I’ve read so far but I’m not even halfway through with what I found in the catalogue and I’ve not even started online research yet so there may be something out there.”

Rose’s smile was brighter than the sun. “Brilliant.”

She picked up her tea and stood, backing up towards the door. “Want to start looking now?”

“Eager, are we?” he asked, raising his eyebrows.

“A little! Aren’t you?”

He nodded, a smile breaking over his face.

“So… library?”

“Jack probably would like to see you first,” the Doctor admitted. “Told him you ate something that didn’t agree with you and were sleeping it off.”

“Good story. I take it he didn’t have the poor sense to piss off a wizard too?” She tucked her tongue into the corner of her smile and the Doctor couldn’t find it in him to take umbrage at her tease.

“I didn’t know he was a magic user when I started that argument,” he protested.

“But you admit that you started the argument?”

He rolled his eyes. “Yes. I started that one. Now go find Jack and tell him you’re fine. I’ll be in the library when you’re ready to get started.”

“Alright. I’ll see you in a bit, then.” She stepped out into the corridor and disappeared for a moment before sticking her head back into the kitchen. “And thanks for cooking for me, Doctor.”

He just nodded and Rose disappeared again. The Doctor quickly washed the dishes and made his way to the library. He still had far more questions than answers but he’d made good headway. He couldn’t wait to tackle the problem with Rose at his side to help.

He rather thought the two of them could conquer anything if they put their minds to it.


End file.
